Back in July, RIM was at stage one: denial. Today, they launched the third beta of BlackBerry 10 and new development hardware. But, as Dieter Bohn reports for The Verge, there’s a lot of work ahead:

That’s the current state of BlackBerry 10, but is it final? Probably not: RIM promised that there were still a few “surprises” in store. […]

RIM has a very difficult road to travel with BlackBerry 10: it needs to get a critical mass of apps by launch to even get a second look from consumers, let alone a first one. To prepare developers, the company has had to keep them up to speed by trickling out information about the next platform instead of unveiling it all at once with a big splash. That has made for a series of teases and hints, but not a complete picture of RIM’s mobile strategy.

Looks like RIM has skipped stage two (anger), and has gone straight to bargaining: “Wait for Q1 2013, because we’ll have a great OS then.”

It’s too bad, because there’s a lot of very interesting stuff in here. Bohn says that it’s a cross between iOS and Windows Phone, which sounds delightful in theory. In practice, I doubt it’s going to gain traction with developers or users, which is too bad. There’s a lot of good talent in Waterloo.

He argues that BlackBerry 10 is going to have a chance to beat Windows Phone 8 out as the next platform after iPhone and Android. “We have a clear shot at being the number three platform on the market.”

From the number one smartphone on the market to “ehh, we’ll aim for number three” in just a few years.